The present invention relates to the field of electronic design automation (EDA) software, and more specifically, to techniques of verifying, evaluating, and estimating the performance of integrated circuits.
Integrated circuit technology is a marvel of the modem age. Integrated circuits are used in many applications such as computers, consumer electronics, networking, and telecommunications. There are many types of integrated circuits including microprocessors, microcontrollers, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), gate arrays, programmable logic devices (PLDs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), dynamic random access memories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasable programmable read only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable programmable read only memories (EEPROMs), and Flash memories. Integrated circuits are also sometimes referred to as “chips.”
Integrated circuit technology continues to rapidly advance. Automation tools are needed to simplify and expedite the task of designing an integrated circuit. It is important to be able to accurately predict or estimate the performance of an integrated circuit before the integrated circuit is fabricated. Techniques are needed to provide accurate, fast estimates of the performance of an integrated circuit.
As semiconductor processing techniques continue to improve, the performance of integrated circuits also continues to improve. Deep-submicron integrated circuit technology has enabled commercial multimillion transistor commercial integrated circuits operating at, for example, 500 megahertz. High clock frequencies require the ability to reliably analyze the performance of circuits with little tolerance for error. A 10 percent tolerance in a performance estimate of a 500 megahertz design equates to a margin of 200 picoseconds, which is 0.200 nanoseconds. In other words, there is little room for error in performance estimation.
In addition to accuracy, capacity, and speed are also important considerations for any performance estimation technique. For example, time-to-market pressures demand performance analysis tools with the ability to obtain an accurate snapshot of the performance of a 10-million-transistor design within a day so that system architects can make meaningful architectural tradeoffs without having to wait for days to obtain an accurate result.
As can be seen, techniques are needed to predict and estimate the performance of integrated circuits, especially fast and efficient techniques that provide accurate results for integrated circuit designs with a large number of transistors.